Research by Grand Valley State University Sociology Professor reworks traditional definition of gender

David MooreOctober 30, 2013 | WGVU

This is about transgender
people who identify themselves more with the other sex.And it’s not a sickness or perversity or
attention getting game.

Make no
mistake-it does make a lot of people very uncomfortable.

Dr. Laurel Westbrook is Assistant Professor of
Sociology at Grand Valley State University, and co-author of Doing Gender, Determining Gender.

She admits this is a lot different from
conventional wisdom that holds physical characteristics such as genitals,
hormones and chromosomes to be the sole determiners of gender.

Westbrook said
that’ssomething that is taken for
granted and natural. But she observes that “Slowly people arestarting to realize that gender Is socially
constructed and as people come to understand that, they have an easier time
getting their head around the idea that there are people who identify as a
gender other than the one they were labeled at birth.”

Westbrook found that while
people may tend to accept transgenders in day to day public situations---they
draw the line at sharing a sex segregated environment like a rest room, locker room or sports team.